Summer Movies: Top Popcorn Flicks

By Jennifer Vineyard Special to CNN |
5/31/2013, noon

Man of Steel

Does Henry Cavill make the best Superman, though? “Man of Steel” is another reboot, this time with director Zack Snyder at the helm. Unlike the last Superman film, Bryan Singer’s “Superman Returns” (2006), this is an origin story with a young Clark Kent realizing the scope of his powers and what he was out on Earth to do.

June 21: “World War Z”

Brad Pitt is also out to save the world, but only because it’s infested by zombies. The producer and star of “World War Z” (based on Max Brooks’ book) plays a former U.N. staffer caught up in a zombie pandemic. Pitt has said the film offered up a couple of challenges, and not just how to fight the undead: “How do we keep the global, dynamic scope of the book, and how do we originate a genre that’s been done quite often and really, really well?” One of the solutions is to show the pandemic as it unfolds instead of merely documenting the aftermath.

June 28: “White House Down,” “Byzantium”

Channing Tatum also plays the hero, but on a smaller scale. In “White House Down,” he plays a man who has just interviewed for his dream job with the Secret Service and is on-site when terrorists storm the White House. He may not have gotten the job officially, but he in effect does it anyway by protecting the president (Jamie Foxx). Expect lots of explosions.